


Deals Were Made

by orphan_account



Category: Wynonna Earp - Fandom
Genre: Dramatic Lesbian Nicole Haught, F/F, What did you do Nicole?, speculation fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-22
Updated: 2020-08-22
Packaged: 2021-03-06 14:14:57
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,690
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26040238
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: What would you trade to get everything back?
Relationships: Waverly Earp/Nicole Haught
Comments: 17
Kudos: 140





	Deals Were Made

The first day is mostly about screaming. 

Broken legs hurt, and this strange new friend of Wynonna’s isn’t necessarily gentle as she drags Nicole slowly out of the Black Badge Monument facility. Nicole blesses whatever instinct had her zipper the truck keys in her pocket, and passes out after they hit the first pothole on the way out of there. 

The second day is mostly about fentanyl, and surgery. Doctors carefully explaining what needs to be done. Rachel nodding along, and Nicole mostly nodding off

Given all that, it takes a few days for the doubt to creep in. Soft tendrils that wrap slowly into her brain. The screaming right after Wynonna had plunged through the barrier. It had definitely been an Earp giving something hell.

Definitely.

Maybe.

No. Nicole shakes it away, shifts her cast. That screaming hadn’t been Wynonna. It hadn’t been Waverly. It hadn’t.

*  
“I looked at your chart.” The doctor revs the Stryker saw, and grins a little. “Seems like you don’t really need the spiel about how the saw can’t cut you.” 

Nicole dredges around inside, and finds a smile for him. “Nope. This is my seventh lifetime cast. I’ve got this part down. And man, let me tell you how much I’m looking forward to the scratching.”

The doctor laughs and cuts her cast off. He winks as he leaves, friendly, not creepy. Nicole lets her smile die. She looks at her scaly, atrophied leg, and knows for certain that the screaming had been Waverly. 

*  
At some point, Nicole moves out to the Homestead. She’s there so much that she might as well, right? Because what if they come home and no one is there. Or worse, they come home and they _need her,_ and she’s not there.

“Two bags, Rachel, just some clothes,” Nicole says, but she’s distracted looking around her living room, all spare and clean and blue, convincing herself this is just short-term and she can leave everything for now. Even the pictures, though? She runs a finger over the silver frame around one of her favorites, Waverly leaning back into her arms as they laugh at some secret moment between them.

A clattering from above jolts her back to the present and she grabs the picture, hastily shoving it into her bag just as Rachel appears down the stairs. Nicole’s struck again by how much she’s like Wynonna, just brash and noisy, occupying all the spaces she possibly can while somehow still managing to curl inward on herself like a porcupine, an impenetrable spiky ball. 

“I can’t find a cat,” Rachel says, “she must have gotten out. Cats are survivors like that.” 

And there’s that word again. Nicole shakes it off and wanders over to the coat closet, checking inside again, even if she’s already done that and shut the door firmly behind her, after all everyone knows cats are a little bit magical. She makes the little kissy noise that usually brings Calamity sauntering in, deigning to be stroked. And finally, she rattles the bag of treats...something that’s never failed before. But nothing. It’s like Calamity vanished into thin air. Just like Nedley. And Doc. And Wynonna. And Waverly. Nicole winds up and throws the treats into the sink where they scatter in messy lumps.

“Let’s go,” she tells Rachel, scooping up her backpack and duffel. Rachel ducks obediently for the door, slowing only to grab Nicole’s patrol boots. 

“I’m taking these,” she says, and they’re gone. 

*  
Nicole wakes up with Rachel in the doorway, the bright beam of her own department issued Surefire light feeling like it’s carving an actual channel through her eyeballs. She holds up a hand and squints, clearing her throat against the dryness of sleep before growling out, “The fuck, Rachel?” 

“The fuck yourself, you were screaming again,” Rachel says, dropping the light and backing out of the doorway in that insouciant way that she has, but not before calling over her shoulder, “I’m making tea.”

It takes her a moment to gather herself before she untangles from the blankets, shuffling to the edge and grimacing at the combination of her own smell, sour sweat, and the stiffness in her leg. Nicole knows she was lucky. The docs did a pretty good job on her leg, and even the scars from the surgery aren’t too grievous. She can almost imagine Waverly smirking as she touches them with gentle fingertips, reminding her how _chicks dig scars_.

But no, Nicole shakes off the memory, sitting at the edge of Waverly’s mattress, stretching and flexing her toes until she feels ready to walk out into the kitchen without a limp, because goddamn if she’ll give Rachel another reason to feel like she’d be better off on her own. 

In the kitchen, Rachel’s puttering, pushing aside clanking jars of her foul Kombucha to find two mugs, mismatched and ridiculous like Rachel prefers. She wordlessly holds out a steaming cup to Nicole and she takes it, but not before a suspicious glance inside. 

“It’s peppermint,” Rachel says. 

Nicole sighs, rolling her head back on her shoulders, she shoves a rough hand through her hair, which is already longer, and she runs her thumb over a raised portion of the mug, holding it up to see a bulging Garfield the Cat lounging cross-legged with a speech bubble above him declaring that, “Many people own cats and go on to live normal lives.”

“Where’d you get this one?” she asks, not missing the way Rachel’s eyes skitter off to the side. Having Rachel is a little bit like having a cat is...was...she comes and goes as she pleases these days, after they’d had “the talk”. Rachel reminding her that she was seventeen and had cared for herself for a while, and that Nicole wasn’t _her mom_. Nicole giving in grudgingly because she needed Rachel more than she would admit, needed someone to care for after everyone else, even Calamity Jane, had abandoned her. There would have to be give and take, they’d agreed, and now Rachel at least told her when she was going out, and came back with useful salvage (Nicole breathing a sigh of relief each time she returned), and listened to her talk. In exchange Nicole didn’t pry too much. 

But Nicole knows a look of longing when she sees one, and lately she’s been seeing it a lot on Rachel’s face. Plus, Nicole listens, even where there’s not much to hear, and she’s watching all the time. She knows after this long that Rachel might not see the Homestead as “home” but she knows a safe place to hunker down when she sees one. And Nicole’s pretty sure they respect each other now. 

“The tea is good, thanks,” Nicole says, throwing herself down into one of the rickety kitchen chairs. She slouches a little, deliberately setting herself just a little lower than Rachel, and leans over her cup, focusing on the contents as if they were utterly fascinating. “So, what’s his name?” she asks, casual. 

Rachel bangs into a chair, so quickly does she back away from the sink, and there it is again, the defiance, chin held high and her mouth a thin line. She glares at Nicole, who blinks placidly back. 

“Look, Rachel, it’s fine if you don’t want to tell me, but promise me you’re being safe.”

“Jesus, Nicole,” Rachel shrieks, “we’re not…” Her face blushes hot and Nicole barks out a laugh. And anyhow, there’s the admission she’d been waiting for. 

“Okay well, I was talking about _our_ safety, as in, trusting strangers, bringing them to our home.”

Rachel regains her composure enough to sidle back over to the table and sit down across from Nicole. She fiddles with a spoon she finds there while Nicole waits, patient and steady like she always is with spooked animals and young women, sipping her tea and keeping her hands relaxed and loose around the mug. Waiting, waiting, Nicole Haught is good at that...when the mystery is there to crack right in front of her, when the crack is there to fix. Other times? Maybe not so much. 

“His name is Billy,” Rachel says. She looks up at Nicole as if challenging her to say anything. Nicole purses her lips and waits. 

“I met him through the swaps. He brought me that mug.” She nods at Nicole’s Garfield mug.

”So he’s paying attention,” Nicole says. Rachel shrugs. “And his family?” she asks, careful. “Where did he come from?”

“Lotta new folks in Purgatory,” Rachel says dismissively. “Do you think other places are like this? Like...Miami? Do they have, like, monsters and stuff?”

“I’m gonna say yes,” Nicole says, not mentioning the obvious fact of Rachel’s mom working and dying for Black Badge, not mentioning zombies, and the things in the traps every morning. She’s not going to let Rachel distract her until she knows that whoever this Billy is, he’s safe.

Another slow sip of tea. “So, Billy, he’s alone, or—”

“He lives with his mom. She’s really strict,” Rachel says. “And we’re just friends.” She crosses her arms over her chest and Nicole doesn’t need an Academy class on the fundamentals of reading body language to know the conversation is over for now. Good enough. She nods decisively and stands, putting her mug in the sink. 

“I trust you, Rachel. Be safe. Keep us safe.” 

*  
The junkyard hadn’t been here before. 

Nicole had been a Purgatory Sheriff’s Deputy, and now she’s just plain Sheriff. She might not know every stick and tree, but she knows every establishment. The junkyard currently sprawling in front of her, it hadn’t been here, before.

She yanks open the door handle, before the concept of _before_ and _after_ can bite.

“And what might you be needing?” Nicole jerks up, finding a woman. Dishwater blond and tired looking, but she’s got the stamp of the Prairies. Under the middle aged spread is a hard woman.

“Afternoon, ma’am. I’m just looking around, getting acquainted with the new places.”

“Magpie’s ain’t new. Been around since the first.”

Nicole feels it prickle. Something Purgatorian creeping under her skin. “Well, I guess I never noticed, tucked away back here,” Nicole redirects, and sticks out her hand. “I’m Sheriff Nicole Haught, pleased to make your acquaintance.”

“Margot,” the woman fills in. She doesn’t offer a last name, and she doesn’t shake hands. “You need spare parts, you come find me.”

“I’ll remember that,” Nicole says, and tips her hat. Her welcome clearly run out.

“You’re living at the Earp’s place, aren’t you?” the woman calls after her. Nicole stiffens, but turns back.

“Yes.”

“They ever come back?” Margot asks.

“No,” Nicole says, and makes it back to her cruiser on stilted legs. She stops by her little blue house on the way home, but the dish she’s been leaving out for Calamity Jane hasn’t been touched. 

Not even the possums or raccoons have been by. Not even the magpies. “Fucking Purgatory,” Nicole mutters, and kicks the dish over.

*  
She’s eating a cheese sandwich, the next time the junkyard woman finds her. Sat behind the wheel of her cold cruiser, eating a cold sandwich.

“Seems you’re backsliding, without that little girl of yours.”

The voice is right _there_ , right next to her on the outside of the window, and Nicole starts hard enough her thighs knock the steering wheel.

“It’s cheese, isn’t it? And that Earp girl is vegan. Or she was.”

“Is,” Nicole practically hisses.

“Hrm,” the woman makes a disgruntled noise. “Them Earps were never any good. Seems like you might be better off.” 

“It’s a fine afternoon, ma’am,” Nicole tells her, flat. “I think maybe you should go enjoy it.” The woman doesn’t take the hint, just looks grimly amused.

“Used to be, you were looking for something, you’d take a dowsing rod, and go find it. I’ve got some old ones, up at the junkyard, you find it’s something you want to try, Sheriff.” Then she’s gone, before Nicole can make her mouth work. It takes two full minutes for the hair on her arms to lay back down.

*  
“Where did you get the shipping container?” Rachel asks, as she comes into the kitchen. She stomps snow from her boots onto the floor and Nicole sighs, loud enough that Rachel actually looks contrite and takes two steps back onto the doormat. She unzips her coat, the baby blue parka that Nicole knows is Waverly’s, and tosses it haphazardly towards a chair. If this is what it’s like to have a teenager, Nicole’s glad she can’t get pregnant by accident. Payback, she assumes, for all the cigarettes and makeout sessions with the preacher’s daughter behind the church. Rachel drags her backpack over to the kitchen table and starts digging through it.

“The bunker?” Nicole says. “I bought it.” 

Rachel laughs. “Bunker? Isn’t that one of those container things off a truck? What are we gonna keep in that?”

Nicole looks out the window at the box. Large and dark, it obscures what was once a nice view of Alberta prairie land. It now looms ominously close to the house, and its placement is deliberate, the steel reinforced door just eight long strides from the side of the porch, which Nicole’s already relieved of its railings. Forty feet of good hard cover, and that’s just the outside.

“—although I guess we could sell salvage out of it,” finishes Rachel, who’s joined her at the sink. Nicole snaps around, fast.

“No. That’s no shipping container, Rachel. It’s a military grade bunker. Quarter inch plate steel. Kevlar lined, bullet proof glass, shower and beds, soundproofing, viral air filtration. They won’t—” she stops short, noticing Rachel looking at her with a combination of concern and fear, bright in her eyes. 

Nicole schools her features into something she hopes resembles a wry smile. “Honestly,” she tells Rachel with a conspiratorial smirk, “it’s just for Waverly and me to get a little privacy from Wynonna.” 

“Gross.” Rachel pushes off the counter. “Also, cool. I found some .223 ammo while I was out.” She tosses the boxes on the table. Nicole smiles. 

“I’ll add them to the tally.” 

*  
“Looking a little disheveled there, Sheriff,” Margot says, and boy does she have a knack for catching Nicole at the least opportune moment. This time she’s in the bullpen staring at the empty desks, wondering when it happened that she lost all her deputies. Probably about the same time the monsters started outnumbering the regular folks. The phone rings endlessly. 

“What the fuck,” Nicole yelps, startled. Margot smiles in a way that makes Nicole long for familiar _human_ enemies like Bunny Loblaw.

“Language, Sheriff. Where’s the famous situational awareness?” She tuts, all false sympathy. “Can’t say as I don’t understand. Hard enough to take care of a teenage girl, without also trying to do a job you ain’t cut out for,” Margot says placidly. “Where’d your deputies go?”

“Leave Rachel out of this,” Nicole says, ignoring the rest. 

Margot rests her hands on the bullpen for a moment, then pulls them back with a grimace, considering her palms before wiping them obviously on her slacks. “Point is, you seem to have a lot on your plate, Nicole. Family to find, people to keep safe, y’know, things like that.” 

The landscape shifts under Nicole’s house of cards, and she can almost see it trembling. 

“Everything is under control, ma’am,” Nicole straightens to her full height, rests her hands on her belt, digs deep for the confidence she once had as Sheriff, back when she knew she had family at her back. 

Margot squints and shrugs. “Whatever you say.” 

*  
Nicole is sitting on a park bench the next time Margot shows up. Taking a break, but now musing that it’s just like Purgatory, to suddenly have a new citizen who’s also an old citizen.

“Sheriff,” Margot greets her. Nicole nods back, but Margot stops and stares. Long enough that Nicole shifts.

“Running some errands?” The conversational gambit seems less painful than the staring, but Margot just smiles.

“You could call it that, yes.”

"Well, good luck.” Nicole stands, but Margot catches her wrist. Nicole stares at where their skin touches. The woman’s hand is warm and dry. Normal, and Nicole doesn’t really understand the shudder. Margot pulls her hand back.

”You look tired, Sheriff. Trouble sleeping, juggling all them responsibilities?”

Nicole feels it like a lance behind her eye. A jagged and dazzling pain. “Quit the shit, Margot. You’ve been hintin’ around for days. Just tell me whatever it is.”

“I might can get her back. Your beloved Waverly Earp.”

Nicole feels it echo, and echo. Down into all the hollow places that Wynonna, and Waverly, and even stupid Doc had carved out inside her. Promising her family, and leaving her drugged on the kitchen floor. Left behind, unworthy. Nicole of nothing, and no one.

“Yes,” Nicole says. “Yes, yes. Anything.”

“That’s a dangerous thing to say, around here.” Margot looks at her with narrowed, suspicious eyes. Nicole shrugs. There is nothing left inside her to care any longer.

“Tell me what you want, and I’ll tell you if it’s a deal.”

“I want the town.” Margot says it flat. Factual. Nicole actually snorts, before realizing.

“You’re being serious.”

“As a heart attack, little darling. My Holt is going to run for Sheriff, and you’re going to stand in the corner, and let him run unopposed.”

“But why?” Nicole says, even if part of her already knows. It’s always been about the Earps, and fucking everything up for them. Something deeper is here, Waverly would know what it is, but Nicole’s just a small town Sheriff missing her reasons to be.

“Ain’t too hard to sell, what with that leg of yours. This town needs a whole man to keep law and order. You ain’t even one half of that equation.” Margot’s mouth settles into a thin line. 

Nicole swallows. She swallows again. The town, the whole town. In her dreams at night, Waverly screams. She screams, and she doesn’t stop, and Nicole can never find her.

“No,” Nicole says, and oh god, it’s hard. “No.”

*  
Nicole snaps awake, panting and listening. Hearing something from the perimeter traps. The regular growling and snapping. Then, above it, below it, something else.

“Fuck,” Nicole whisperers, then flails for her pants, boots, mittens, hat. Getting it all on, but not snapped, laced, buttoned.

“Nicole!” A voice screams from the perimeter. “Nicole, please!”

“I’m coming!” Nicole bellows, stumbling down the stairs, past Rachel’s sleep creased face and slouching sleep pants, out the door. Slipping, and sliding, and kicking rooster tails of snow. Wet and heavy, calf deep and dragging at her legs. Like a nightmare come to life, with Waverly calling for her. 

“I’m here,” Nicole voice fills the night, body fighting the snow, heart hammering fit to burst, but it doesn’t matter because Waverly is calling. She’s calling, she’s here—

Nicole flails herself awake. A new trick, saving Rachel the trouble. Dry eyed, she turns on her side, and stares at the wall.

*  
“Okay,” Nicole tells Margot. Slumped into a chair, surrounded by junk that’s no man’s treasure, blue-eyed and hazy from the way the line between sleep and not-sleep has thinned.

“Okay, what?” The woman snaps back, suspicious. 

“The town,” Nicole says. “I’ll give Holt the town, but I need them all. All of them. Waverly, and Wynonna, and Doc.”

“Three,” Margot says, voice flat. “Three ain’t what we agreed on.” 

“A whole town isn’t enough?” Nicole snaps, and the anger feels warm. It _feels_ , period, but Margot just shrugs.

“It’s not me, sitting there, asking for a deal.”

“What would it be?” Nicole feels the storm surge batter the levee, working into the chinks.

“You give me a little bit of your fire, Sheriff Nicole Haught. And then you give me a little bit of that little girl of yours, too.”

“No.” It’s hard, and immediate, and unconscious. “Never Waverly.”

“Butch little thing, ain’t ya.” Margot gives her a hard look. “But fine, a little bit of you alone.”

“What does that mean?”

“Everyone has one covenant. You’ll give me yours.”

“A covenant?”

“If you don’t know what it is, you won’t ever miss it.” Margot tells her. It feels like a riddle, pulsing in time with the exhaustion swimming in her head.

“But you’ll bring her back? Waverly? She’ll come back, here, and she’ll be _Waverly_.”

“Tell you what. I’ll let it be cash on delivery. You spend some time...satisfying yourself over authenticity, then you come back to me to settle your debt.”

It’s not that Nicole doesn’t know. She knows. She knows, she knows, _she knows_. The house always wins. “Okay,” she mumbles, resting her forehead on the edge of the table.

“Bring me her hair,” Margot says, but Nicole _knows_ , and she hands over what’s already in her pocket. “Clever girl,” Margot gives her a look that seems almost approving, before turning her back. Hunched over, and whispering to something.

“Your divining rod,” she turns back, thumping a mason jar down in front of Nicole. She peers at it, then up at Margot.

“A stick?”

”A straight rod to show her the true path, a thread to bind you, and something of her own to call her home.”

Nicole touches the metal rim, hesitant, but it feels like nothing. No heat, or cold, or buzzing.

“Once you’ve decided it’s the right girl, no tricks, you open that jar. That’s the cash. You understand?”

Nicole stands, abruptly. Standing this close, she towers, but Margot just snorts. “Put it in the window, call her home.”

Nicole goes home, puts the jar in the window, and sleeps for nineteen hours.

“I milked the skunks, and baited the traps, and woke you up to pee three times. You mumbled about unicorns, it was creepy.” Rachel stares at her, and this time Nicole sees pity in her judgy teenage expression.

Nicole, who has no memory of peeing, let alone unicorns, nods. “Thanks.”

“You seem less terminally depressed than you did before,” Rachel says, shoving a spoonful of peanut butter directly into her mouth.

“I have a good feeling,” is all Nicole says.

*  
The good feeling becomes nerves by 10:00, anger by lunch, and trickles into despair as the sun sinks down.

Thirty days later Nicole spies the jar on her way through, and with a little bellow of rage and exhaustion, snatches it up above her head. Poised. No, _caught_. She lowers her arm, some dry sobbing noise coming from her chest.

She puts the jar on a high shelf in the closet, makes dinner, baits the traps, and makes sure Rachel is inside before locking the door. She does it that night, and the next, and the next. Night, after night, after night. Hope and despair tangled at the root, and numbed under a suffocating blanket of routine.

*  
On the 572nd day, Nicole hears something past the traps. The sun is still in the sky, but it only takes 3 weeks to make new habits, and Nicole’s had 81 full weeks. The shotgun leaps to her hand without thought, but the bullet isn’t as lucky, ricocheting off the tree, instead of thunking into the intruder.

A woman yelps, but Nicole is already charging. “Eat shit, shit eater! I’m warning you. No trespassing!” she screams, and in front of her is Waverly. It’s real, and it’s a dream, and it’s real, and Nicole is afraid it’s a dream.

“Are you real?” she asks, and doesn’t even remember the jar.

*  
They’re in the house before Nicole remembers opening the door, so surrounded is she in everything Waverly. Her smell, her taste, it’s like no time has passed at all. Muscle memory has her locking the door behind them; later she’ll find that she threw the heavy new slide bolt she’d installed, but all that matters is her hands on Waverly, the way Waverly has shed her coat and then pulled off Nicole’s.

Now she’s stripped to her tank top, kissing Waverly hard against the stairway wall, the desire to get closer overwhelming. Nicole almost can’t breathe they’re kissing so hard, and Waverly laughs a little at her desperation with a quiet, “I missed you too, baby,” and how can she be so calm?

When Waverly strips her shirt over her head and palms at her breast, Nicole almost comes right then. Her body is starved for sensation, it’s been weeks since she’d even touched herself anymore, thinking of Waverly. So when a hot mouth descends on her nipple, Nicole’s jaw drops open and her back arches, pressing into Waverly, her palms on the top of Waverly’s thighs and her thumbs sliding mindlessly along the edge of Waverly’s underwear. 

Waverly straddles her and surrounds her with sweet smelling hair, mouthing at her neck, hands coasting up and down her torso, scratching along the curve of her breast, Waverly’s sex hot against Nicole’s stomach. 

“I need to touch you,” begs Nicole, pushing her fingers almost roughly against the band of Waverly’s underwear, which at this point is probably ruined with the way Waverly’s grinding against her. Nicole almost can’t bear to stop her, watching as Waverly takes pleasure above her, admiring the long column of her neck as her head throws back. Waverly places a steadying hand on Nicole’s chest and rises up, looking down into her eyes, and now Nicole can slide the underwear away, sinking her fingers into all that slick heat. She pushes herself up on an elbow and curls inside. Waverly moans and Nicole knows she’s found it. 

“Home,” she says, reverent, “you’re home.”

*  
Waverly threatens _I am going to go to town and I am gonna_ ** _kick so much ass_** _, I might go up a shoe size,_ in front of the closet, and Nicole remembers the jar.

It looks the same, when she sneaks off, dragging a chair over and flailing an arm deep into the shelf. 

She mutters, and shoves it back into its dark spot. It’s just a jar. Margot is just a woman. It’s all just superstition.

Still just superstition when Rachel decides to violate the sanctity of the _kitchen_ by suggesting a trip to the local neighborhood junkyard, Nicole still too caught up in everything Waverly to recognize the warning alarms going off. And yes, thanks, still superstition when Margot mocks about swords, and princesses to save. Her eyes flicker between Waverly, and Nicole. _Real?_ they seem to ask.

It’s the real Waverly, but she saved herself. She, and Wynonna, and Doc, and Nicole don't owe the woman anything. Not a goddamn thing. 

“Careful, Margot,” she snaps, but nothing ends up being careful. Billy pulls a tooth from his own head, the roots grotesquely long, and talks about his one covenant. Nicole holds a sobbing Rachel, and feels it shiver straight up her spine.

Whatever a covenant might be, it doesn’t matter. Waverly rescued herself, and the house rules don’t apply.

“Just in the nick of time.” Margot stands from her busy stoop, and gives Nicole that grinning sneer, but Nicole doesn’t break stride. “Come to pay that cash on delivery of the real girl?”

“Giving it back.” Nicole smacks the jar down on the very same table where she’d first mumbled _okay_. “Because I owe you nothing.”

“How you figure it?” Margot laughs, and it’s cruel. She turns away to study the jar, and that’s somehow cruel, too. Turning her back, like Nicole isn’t an enemy, a Sheriff, a wielder of power. 

“Doc and Waverly got themselves out of the Garden, and you know it.” Nicole grits. She feels stupid enough as is, not to bring in the fact that the current state of Purgatory is all her fault too. 

“Come on,” Margot scoffs. “You might be dumbstruck for that Earp tart, but you’re not stupid.”

“It’s over,” Nicole snaps, insistent. Righteous. _The house rules don’t apply._

“Oh honey,” Margot turns back, and Nicole knows, knows for sure that even here, even with things done for the best of reasons, the house does win. Always. “It’s just beginning,” Margot says, twisting the jar open.


End file.
